


Anything But Ordinary

by MusexMoirai



Series: The New Normal [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusexMoirai/pseuds/MusexMoirai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Welcome to the McKinley High School for Gifted Youngsters. This is a “Dynamic Duets” inspired fic wherein a passing asteroid plays superpower roulette with Glee’s colorful cast of characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anything But Ordinary

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Train's "Ordinary."
> 
> Inspiration taken from firesnaps (http://firesnaps.tumblr.com/) and this lovely fanmix by kelbebop (http://beyond-dapper.livejournal.com/478227.html). Lots of thanks and love to alltherattlesnakes (http://alltherattlesnakes.tumblr.com/) for her advice and for letting me bounce ideas off of her!

The first time Brittany S. Pierce sees an asteroid heading toward Earth through her homemade (yet absurdly powerful) telescope, she doesn’t call the authorities. NASA has blocked her after one false alarm too many, she doesn’t know the phone numbers of any local newspapers, and Jacob Ben Israel wouldn’t be interested unless said asteroid had gotten knocked up by a football quarterback or was home to millions of tiny alien Rachel Berry clones. So Brittany crunches the numbers, double-checks her figures, and then picks up Lord Tubbington and whispers her conclusion into his ear.

“That’s a magic meteor and it’s going to give us all special powers. I just know it.”

Lord Tubbington flicks an ear indifferently and headbutts her hand, asking for a scratch. Magical power-granting asteroids aside, some things never change.

-

Rachel Berry closes her eyes and lets the music sweep over her. The song carries her along in its wake and she skillfully navigates its verses and choruses as she nears the Waterloo that would have defeated her a mere two years ago - a high crystalline A flat. She takes a breath, her impeccable diaphragmatic control making the motion nearly imperceptible. Here it is now… she hits it dead on, no scooping up to the note like an amateur.

The sound is gorgeous. Clear as a bell.

Rachel opens her eyes again. Carefully takes measure of her audience. Every last face is enthralled. There’s a sniffle coming from the far left side and the middle-aged man who was diligently picking his nose when she had taken the stage is now wiping away tears from his eyes.

It may only be a fundraiser event to raise money for Lima’s longest-running Little League baseball team, but that’s nothing to sneeze at. Barbra Streisand and Ethel Merman had gotten their start in nightclubs and… okay, so this venue was an elementary school auditorium instead of a nightclub. The principle was still the same.

As the sound of applause begins and builds to a crescendo, Rachel grins.  _This_ , she thinks.  _This is what makes me special_.

-

“The blueberry flavor is the worst,” Quinn Fabray finds herself telling the new boy as she towels off his face. She can’t say why, but she wants to make him laugh. He doesn’t know a thing about her and that’s probably his most attractive trait at the moment. She wants to be someone’s dream girl again. “I looked like a creature out of  _Avatar_ down there when I got slushied.”

“I saw  _Avatar_ , like, six times,” he responds, and that’s nothing like what she expected. She thought he’d be smoother, maybe try to use a pickup line on her. She swears she’s heard all the lines that high school boys use. They’re not as inventive or clever as they like to think they are. What she isn’t ready for is a boy who’s disarming and slightly nerdy - no, really nerdy.

She blinks, trying to come up with words. He’s very blond, a part of her mind notices. He has nice lips.

He lets her change the topic and then asks her why she stays in glee club. Honesty comes easier to her at that moment than it usually does. It’s an odd feeling, letting her defenses down. It makes her throat close up. She fidgets, smooths the wet hair out of his eyes.

There’s a brief silence.

“Lor menari.” He smiles, but Quinn’s too distracted to register if his smile is nice or not because cute-new-guy-who-has-potential has started turning a bright shade of cornflower blue. His eyes widen unnaturally, whites turning to yellow. His nose flattens and his body starts to elongate. There is the loud harsh sound of ripping fabric.

Quinn reacts in an instant, her instincts honed by Coach Sue’s cutthroat Navy SEAL-approved cheerleading routines. She kicks at creature that used to be Sam Evans, her foot connecting with some fleshy part with a sensation that makes her sick to her stomach. She scrambles for the handle of the restroom door, watching him stumble around, never taking his eyes off him.

“Stay away from me! I have pepper spray!” Her voice is shrill. She hates it when she gets hysterical.

She yanks the door open and stumbles out into the hallway. Quinn’s hands are shaking. Her heart is pounding.

The door swings shut behind her.

Sam grasps the edge of the sink and pulls himself up and up and up to his feet. This is wrong. His legs and his arms are too long. There’s gotta be something wrong with his eyes, why are his fingers blue? As he raises his hand to his face, he finally looks at himself in the mirror. In his reflection, his yellow eyes widen and his large pointed ears twitch. “Pxasik! No way!”

The face staring back at him from the mirror is one he’s seen before, but only on a movie poster.

What the hell is going on?

-

Two of the refugees from William Schuester’s Choir Room of Misfit Rejects are doing a strange mating dance at each other. It’s gross enough that they indulge in their obscene smutty practices in the privacy of Schuester’s depraved house of sin, but to do it in the hallway? Unforgivable. Sue Sylvester refuses to expend even one iota of brainpower contemplating the filth that may be spewing from their mouths this very instant.

“C’mon, c’mon, toss them into my mouth! I can catch!” Artie says.

Mercedes Jones, holding a box of Junior Mints, looks very skeptical.

Once again: obscene. Sue isn’t even going to bother parsing their inane foreplay-riddled nattering into God-given English (as defined by the book,  _Speaking the Only Official Language of the United States of America for Dummies_ , written by the Republic National Committee). She’s about to pass them with a witty bon mot - an exquisitely crafted gem of an one-liner - when she feels a familiar and very unwelcome feeling. It’s similar to indigestion, if indigestion still had the guts to trouble Sue Sylvester and her recently transplanted iron cast stomach.

Oh no. Not again.

The slow-motion laughter coming from a group of football players echoes in her ears like the booming of cannonballs. Those overgrown idiot manchildren are laughing at her. Her! Sue Sylvester, award-winning cheerleading champion and brand new spokeswoman for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes (she wrestled Tony the Tiger and won)! Sue Sylvester will not be laughed at.

In the time it takes to snap his mouth close, Artie Abrams sees Coach Sue intercept - from midair - a pass from a football player and throw the ball back with enough accuracy that it hits the jock square in the forehead. And with enough force that he goes down like a felled tree. Mercedes winces at the dull thud when his head hits the linoleum and hopes that the sound doesn’t mean a concussion for the poor guy. His buddy stands over him, mouth gaping open in astonishment.

Sue snarls. “And I’ll just be confiscating that, Whitney.” She breezes by Mercedes and snatches the box of mints out of her grasp.

Artie gulps, accidentally swallowing his Junior Mint, and nearly chokes. “Did Sue just… move really fast? Like, freaky-that-can’t-be-human fast?”

Mercedes frowns. “You’re not tripping, Artie. I saw it too. Thank God I’m off the team because that was some seriously weird crap she was making her Cheerios drink.”

Artie looks intrigued. “Weird enough to give people mutant abilities?”

Mercedes shrugs. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Artie Abrams holds his palms up, waggles his fingers in a ‘gimme’ gesture. “Spill them deets, girl. I could use those kind of reflexes now that I’m on the football team.”

-

There are two things that happen almost immediately after Finn Hudson calls out “hut, hut, hike.” First off, the play is unsuccessful, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Coach Beiste has been trying her best with the Titans and they’ve improved by leaps and bounds considering how early in the season it still is. But they’ve never actually been good enough to need to memorize complete plays because they’ve usually never retained possession of the ball that long. For a team of this caliber, the Hail Mary wasn’t so much a desperation move in the playbook as it was a team motto.

The second, and more important, thing was that David Karofsky had just seriously injured a left tackle. At least, it looks serious to Finn. The dude is just laying there on the ground groaning, like he had eaten ten bad breakfast burritos at once (Finn had totally done that before, so he knew how much that shit would hurt). And he’s wheezing. Like, real bad wheezing so that Coach has to ask everyone to step back and give him air.

But that isn’t the crazy thing. The crazy thing is that Finn had seen something. It only lasted a split-second, but Dave’s face had changed. It had metamorphin- metamorpho- metatosis- It transformed into something almost animal, something bestial. And he had seemed much bigger somehow. Loomed, like a bad Frankenstein monster.

For a moment, Dave looks like he’s about to apologize. Then he sneers at the guy writhing on the ground.

“Learn to play football, loser. No one’s gonna hold your hand during the games.”

Finn bristles at that and snaps back. No one gets away with insulting a teammate like that. Even another teammate. “You weren’t supposed to go all in, Karofsky. It’s practice. You could have really hurt him. And that would have hurt us when it’s gametime.”

Dave steps up into Finn’s face, tries to uses his bigger bulk to intimidate. “You know what, queer-terback? That’s not my problem.”

He shoulder bumps Azimio and the two of them laugh.

“Yeah,” Coach says, “what’s your problem is the set of fifteen extra laps you’ve just earned yourself. Pull another stunt like that again and see if I don’t bench prize steers before their big day at the county fair.”

Dave snorts and jogs over in the direction of the track. He’s not about to let Coach’s warning get him down. It’s too bad for Johnson that he got in the way, but he wasn’t going to apologize to Hudson like he owed the guy something. He was kind of preoccupied anyway, with trying to remember. There was a moment before he crashed into Johnson where he felt the kind of power he had never felt before in his life. His skin was tingling with it. Coach should be cheering and asking him what kind of training regimen he’s on. This kind of raw brute force could be their secret weapon at the next game. She may be blind to his potential right now, but Dave’s gonna show her. He’ll harness this energy inside of him, he’ll weaponize it.

It feels like he’s been so long since he felt this good. There are things that have been weighing heavily on his mind recently. But this will get him back in the zone again. He thinks he’ll ask out Amy Wilikers tomorrow. The guys say she’s kind of a tease, but isn’t that the way hot redheads are, like, made?

Dave feels like he could take on the world and win.

-

Exhale. Cross. Exhale. Cross. Exhale. Jab-cross-cross.

Blaine Anderson turns his shoulders and hips on autopilot, the corner of his mind methodically noting the timing, speed, power he’s putting into every punch. Precision and efficiency are paramount. Try to make every movement count. Force equals mass times acceleration. He’s not looking to engaging anyone in an altercation anytime soon, but he practices as if he is. Fights have a way of surprising you in the nastiest way possible. And if it ever becomes necessary… well, he can’t count on being bigger than the other guy, but he can be faster.

Exhale. Cross-

There’s a sudden flicker - a flash of bright light that exists for a millisecond only at the back of his mind. It doesn’t make him stumble, but he overbalances a bit too much and sways. He shakes his head, as if trying to clear it, and rubs his arm across his brow and eyes to wipe away the sweat that’s gathered there. When he blinks his eyes open, it’s as if someone had adjusted a giant focus lens on the camera of the world. Except, it’s not his sight that has been affected. It’s as though he can now see and understand the real relationships between objects. As if he suddenly knew the exact places on his gloves where the stitching has become the most worn through. Knew which machines the center would need to replace first, which areas of the brand new ceiling would leak after a year if they weren’t reinforced. Things seem to have snapped into focus. The funny thing is, he’d never notice them being fuzzy before.

He looks around. Listens carefully. Something vital has changed, but whatever shift that occurred had left no trace on his physical environment. He’s the only person here. The metallic scrape of the chain as the bag gently swings to and fro is the only sound in the otherwise empty workout studio.

Blaine chuckles, stills the bag between his hands and rests his forehead against it. He could chalk the experience up to an unusually potent adrenaline high, but he’s never been one to ignore his own instincts. If they say something is wonky, then it’s wonky, even if he can’t explain it at the moment.

He inhales. Closes his eyes. Conjures in his mind’s eye those familiar dreaded figures. He doesn’t remember faces so much, but he’ll never forget the way their hands had felt. The concrete digging into the flesh of his palms. Pain. Then he exhales and lets the images go. It’s not something he cares to dwell on or talk about, but he’s used his imagination to shape the past into something approaching catharsis. Plus, it’s one hell of a motivator.

He releases the punching bag, whistling to himself as he puts the boxing practice behind him and his mind moves ahead to the upcoming Warblers practice. He’s got a Kelly Clarkson/Carrie Underwood mash-up rattling around in his brain and he wants to have the details hashed out before he suggests it to the Council. Even then, he feels like they’re going to go with Katy Perry instead.

Everything seems so clear now.

-

It’s not that Tina Cohen-Chang really wants to watch  _Twilight_. It’s just that she’s feeling really stubborn. She’d understand if there was questionable content in the film, like really gory violence or full frontal nudity, but she’s not missing out on THE movie that everyone else is talking about just because of her mom’s irrational hatred for Kristen Stewart.

“Please?” she tries again, hoping extra hard. She’s aware the petulant edge of a whine has crept into her voice, but she’s been going at this for nearly half-an-hour now.

Her mother opens her mouth, but then looks puzzled and closes it without saying a word. It’s like she forgot what she wanted to say.

But then…

“Yes.” The word tumbles out. Mom looks surprised, as if her mouth had suddenly stopped cooperating with her brain.

“Really?” Tina knows she’s pressing her luck, but she wants to make her mom say it clearly and unambiguously so she can’t take it back later.

Mrs. Cohen-Chang still looks uncertain, but she nods. “Yes.”

She can’t help it, she squeals in excitement and wraps her arms around her mother. “You won’t regret it! I won’t buy any of the posters so you don’t have to start at Kristen’s dead eyes or whatever it is you don’t like about her, even though I think she’s alright. And I won’t go to a late showing or stay out too long afterward because I know you worry about that. Love you, mom, going up to my room now!”

Hurricane Tina leaves a still-confused parent in her wake as she dashes upstairs and flops on her bed. She pulls out her cell and dials her boyfriend, relaying the event with delicious relish.

“Great?” Mike Chang says, but he sounds puzzled, like he doesn’t get what the big deal is. “But I thought you didn’t even like the books that much?”

Tina rolls her eyes. “So not the point, Mike.”

Because it is great. Newcomer Tina has just gone one round with the formidable and virtually undefeated Mama Bear Cohen-Chang and emerged victorious! She smooshes her cheeks into her pillow. She needs to try being more assertive in school. Who knows? If an attitude adjustment can work on parents, who else could it also work on?

-

Kurt Hummel is ambushed by an orange slushy right before he gets to fifth period. It’s the grossly artificial-tasting cherry on top of the miserable sundae that has been his day so far. There was that math test he might have bombed because he forgot to study the last section they covered. The mid-afternoon locker slam. Trying to Google healthy homemade meal options for his dad at lunch on his cell, only to discover that his web access for the month had been exceeded. He sighs and detours to his locker for his slushy clean-up kit before heading to the girls’ restroom.

Kurt doesn’t ask for much. And he doesn’t believe in bargaining with imaginary yet unreasonable divine authorities who are canonized as figureheads for virulently homophobic religious institutions. But if he did pray, he’d only ask for a few things. A lifetime subscription to Netflix. Two vintage Alexander McQueen skull scarfs. The continued good health of his father. And someone who listens.

He doesn’t need a shining knight on a white charger to ride in and fix his problems. Though that would admittedly be swoonworthy. But how would the horse even fit through the doors? And who would clean up after it? No, Kurt doesn’t need a Clark Kent. He can handle his own problems. He’s been doing well for years, though some days are harder than others. He just wants someone he can unload his problems onto without feeling vaguely guilty because they have their own issues they’re dealing with (Mercedes) or because they won’t really get it (Finn) or because it’ll aggravate their health (Dad) or because they’ll try to turn it into an utterly ineffectual learning opportunity (Mr. Schue).

Kurt presses the towel against his face and sighs. Can he skip the rest of the school day? He’s just so tired right now.

Hearing a soft gasp behind him, he whips the cloth off his face and spins around. He really doesn’t have the patience to deal with girls whose delicate sensibilities have been offended by a boy violating their innermost sanctum and seeing them in the sacred act of completing their makeup routine.

“I’m sorry,” the girl stammers. She’s someone he’s never seen before - big blue eyes, long brown hair, decent complexion but could use a tad more moisturizer - and she looks really young. Probably a freshman. She also looks scared of him. Kurt’s never had someone look at him like that before. It makes him feel less defensive, enough to offer a wry grin of his own. He turns back to the mirror, resumes scrubbing the last remnants of orange food dye off his face.

“I should be the one apologizing, but I really don’t like using the boys’. You should know. I’m assuming you’ve been at McKinley for more than five minutes, so you’re familiar with the kind of Neanderthal lifeforms that lurk around passing for adolescent males at our school.”

He turns around to smile at her and try to include her in the joke. But she’s gone now. All he sees are vacant restroom stalls and no one else but him at the sinks. He blinks in surprise. Wow. Anonymous freshman must move really quietly, because he hadn’t seen or felt her exit the room. Then again, he had the tap running and it must have masked the sound of her footfalls and the door swinging open.

He shrugs and concentrates on making himself look presentable once more. He’ll have to go back to his locker for his hairspray and to store his soiled clothes, but everything else seems passable. It’s sad how used to this routine he’s become.

There’s a tingle on the back of his neck, like someone is watching him. Kurt worries his lower lip between his teeth. The slushy and sudden vanishing act must have unnerved him more than he thought. He may not like ghosts and spooky happenings, but he’s not usually this jumpy and his mind doesn’t always leap to paranormal explanations.

Marley Rose continues to hold her breath. She had almost screamed when she saw her reflection disappear from the mirror. And then when Kurt was looking around and stared straight at her, his eyes scanning all around as if he couldn’t see her standing right in front of him. If he can’t see her, she doesn’t want to say anything. He looks frazzled enough already and the last thing she wants to do is freak him out. She’s only been at McKinley a week, but even she’s heard about Kurt Hummel’s razor sharp tongue and biting wit.

She breathes shallowly, trying to keep her heart out of her throat and take small even breaths. She feels lightheaded and dizzy and it’s a great relief when Kurt finally finishes up and struts out of the restroom, head held high despited being greeted with the sounds of jeers from the hallway.

_I want to be visible again. I want people to see me._  It’s perhaps the first time she’s ever thought that in her life. She doesn’t know how she got this way, only that she had panicked when Kurt had spoken to her. She thought he would insult her and she remembers wishing that she wasn’t there, that he couldn’t see her.

Whatever panic she had then is magnified tenfold now. What if she never turns back? What if she’s invisible forever? What would her mother say? She doesn’t want her mom to cry.

Marley feels tears spring into her eyes and she squeezes them tightly shut. Silently says a fervent prayer.  _Oh God. Oh God. Please._

“You can stop hogging the stall if you’re not going to use it,” someone drawls.

Marley’s eyes snap open. She meets the gaze of a bored-looking redhead in a Cheerio uniform. The girl looks at her. She can totally see her.

“Freak.” She can hear the derisive call of the girl behind her as she beats a hasty retreat from the restroom, but Marley’s never been more relieved in her life. As she’s coming out, she nearly runs headlong into another freshman, Dottie Kazatori. Marley squeaks out an apology at the other girl and hurries onto her next class.

But Dottie hasn’t even heard Marley speak to her. She’s too busy looking at the ground. Initially, she was looking down to avoid stepping in the mess of orange slushy that someone had thoughtlessly spilled onto the linoleum. Except that something weird had happened. As she was stepping over a stripe of sunset orange liquid, the entire puddle had moved away from her. Of its own volition. As if it had wanted to avoid her just as much as she had wanted to avoid it.

Dottie’s eyes widen.

-

Brittany rubs the edge of her finger against her crayon and scribbles another equation down on her paper. Then she clasps her hands together and smiles.

After thirty-seven multicolored pages, she has found a quasiperfect number. Perhaps the first one ever to be found in the entire world. She’s checked on the internet and no one else has found one, not even the people who get paid to sit around and think about numbers all day. Her number is really long and has forty-two distinct prime factors. It’s an abundant number and it’s absolutely perfect.

She takes out her glittery purple gel pen and draws a heart and a cat on the last page of her solution. She’ll put it in her school folder and show it to Artie tomorrow. He’s super smart, so he should be able to follow the math. And then maybe he’ll tell everyone else how smart she really is. Maybe the boys she makes out with won’t talk about how stupid she is right in front of her anymore, like she isn’t there and can’t hear them. Maybe Quinn won’t roll her eyes at her suggestions and Santana would be surprised, but so so proud.

She scoots on her knees over to her bedroom window. Kisses the index and middle fingers of her right hand and then presses her fingers against the glass.

“Thank you, magic meteor,” she whispers.


End file.
